Badger baseball growing from the grassroots up
Posted By Dan Haugh, Special to The Londoner
Posted 4 days ago
Already recognized across the province and many parts of Canada as one of the premier baseball programs in the country, the London Badgers are taking great strides to grow and continue their prominence in the game.
When the Badger program was first launched by the London District Baseball Association (LDBA) in 1994, the numbers of kids playing the game were at all-time highs, the Toronto Blue Jays had just won back-to-back World Series championships and interest in the game of baseball was high. Over the next 15 years starting with the Major League Baseball strike in 1994, interest in baseball and the number of kids playing the game sank.
With the Blue Jays seemingly moving back into contention and the number of players registered for baseball particularly at the youngest age groups growing and approaching the numbers seen in the early 1990s the Badgers are hoping to begin embarking on a plan of growth.
It is the goal of the London Badger program to promote grassroots baseball in the London area. One program that has met with success is called, Hit With The Badgers.
Badger head coach Mike Lumley explains the free hitting clinics as a day of fun and baseball instruction.
“It is basically a day for our kids to give back to the baseball youth in London by having a little fun while teaching the fundamentals of hitting,” Mike says. “We are trying to reach out to the youth of the community and give them some positive role models to look up to and in turn give our players some sort of appreciation for the game and the kids within the community.”
Garry Robbins was at a recent clinic on a chilly Sunday morning with his son Adam who plays for the Eager Beaver Baseball Association’s (EBBA) Mosquito Tecumsehs. “It can only be a positive learning experience when our 10 and 11 year old boys attend a Badgers Baseball Clinic. It was a good time.”
Adam had some very interesting comments as well. “It was really a lot of fun, and I want to do it again. I like playing with the big guys. One of the players taught me how to bend my knees and position my arms so I can hit the ball better.”
You wouldn’t have known it was as chilly as it was by watching the young players go through warm-ups and hitting drills and then play a scrimmage against the Minor Midget Badgers before their weekly doubleheader.
Another EBBA Mosquito player, Daniel Jaffe had some comments about the clinic and the scrimmage in particular. “It was great to play with older boys who are incredible players and who love baseball as much as I do. I don't know how they beat us in the scrimmage when they were hitting from the wrong side and running backwards.”
Daniel’s father Peter Jaffe explained what this kind of experience means to the young ball players. “The boys all want to be Badgers one day, so it is a good motivator to see how much they have to keep learning every day. It is like climbing to the top of one mountain and then seeing four more towering peaks ahead.”
Besides that, thanks to an affiliation agreement struck last year between the Badger midget team and the St. Thomas Tomcats of the Junior Intercounty Baseball League and a similar agreement between the Tomcats and the London Majors there will be a link of elite baseball from top-to-bottom in the London area.
Mike says adding a minor mosquito team this season will help with overall player development.
“The whole idea behind running a minor mosquito program is to run a team of LDBA athletes and slowly teach them the game of baseball through hard work, the teaching of the basic fundamentals and fun. It is very evident that we have to change the thinking of today’s athlete and it all starts at the younger age groups,” Mike says. “We have taken 13 excellent athletes and basically thrown them into a situation where they are going to fail against older and tougher competition early in the season. By the end of June they will have learned how to fail and also will have learned the physical and mental skills to launch them into the second half of the season with strength and confidence.”
The free hitting clinics which are open to all London area baseball players aged 8-12, will continue for the next few weeks.
¦ Anyone interested in knowing more about the London Badgers or becoming involved in the Hit With The Badgers program can visit www.londonbadgers.on.ca.
Badgers